Rieserferner-Ahrn Nature Park is one of South Tyrol's wildest high-mountain regions - a vast landscape of glaciers, alpine meadows and peaks soaring above 3000 m, right on the border with Austria. It's a place for travelers seeking genuine alpine solitude, far from the crowds.

The park stretches across the Rieserferner Group, part of the Venediger Group and a section of the Zillertal Alps, and its defining feature is an abundance of water - countless mountain streams and lakes, including the famous Lake Antholz. The high valleys are framed by mixed coniferous forests, giving way higher up to alpine meadows and pastures, and finally to bare rock and scree slopes. Glaciers still cling to the north-facing slopes, among them the Rieserferner glacier on the Schneebiges Nock, which gave the park its name. In spring and summer the valleys come alive with grazing pastures, autumn turns the coniferous forests golden, and in winter the whole landscape disappears under snow.

How to get there

• Sand in Taufers — starting point with the Rieserferner-Ahrn Nature Park Visitor Centre, information on trails and nature on site
• Kasern (Ahrn Valley) — nature park information point, a good base for exploring the high-mountain terrain

Practical information

• The park was established in 1988, making it the youngest nature park in South Tyrol
• It covers the municipalities of Ahrntal, Gais, Percha, Prettau, Rasen-Antholz and Sand in Taufers
• On the eastern side of the border with Austria, it directly adjoins the Hohe Tauern National Park

Among the peaks exceeding 3000 m are the Dreiherrnspitze (3499 m), Rötspitze (3496 m) and Hochgall (3436 m) - and geologists particularly value the area for its exposed Tauern Window, a unique geological formation.